Separating Species

October 3–December 12, 2009

Concurrent with Grasslands, the Separating Species exhibition featured artists focusing on animals, humans, the biosphere and the U.S. Mexico border, which included photographers Krista Elrick, Dana Fritz, David Taylor and Jo Whaley. Curator Mary Anne Redding recounted an essay by Terry Tempest Williams, In the Shadow of Extinction, about the destruction of prairie dogs on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo elders objected, insisting that if you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain. Redding says, “all things are intertwined: the rain, prairie dogs, folklorists, environmentalists, writers, academics, even those in the government.” Grasslands and Separating Species looked at these disappearing desert grasslands and the animals that are affected when ecosystems, both in the desert and elsewhere, are destroyed: “no one is left to cry for the rain

image above: Whaley Parnassius, Apollo

516 ARTS is a nonprofit contemporary art museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico